Perl's Chip Salzenberg Sued, Home Raided

Chip Salzenberg writes "In April of this year, Health Market Science of King of Prussia, PA, told police that they feared I was misappropriating trade secrets. That very afternoon, police raided my house with a search warrant to seize every computer in the house, paper files, CDs, and DVDs... even my wireless router and cable modem!" Chip was the pumpking for perl's 5.004 release. Keep reading for his description of his current legal troubles, and for a shortcut into what he says prompted his former company's actions, read his letter warning about abuse of open proxies.

Chip continues: "The key evidence in the search warrant was so ridiculous as to be surreal: CVS logs indicating that I downloaded more than I uploaded, and that I sometimes accessed the company network from home. Apparently, for company management, the police, and a judge, working at home through a gateway the company set up for that very purpose, and refraining from editing every source file for every code change, is a sign of nefarious behavior.

My behavior in accessing the company network was entirely within my job description and in no way involved misappropriation of anything. For the more than two years that I worked at HMS, I used ssh and CVS to access company files with my laptop both from work and home, with management knowledge and approval.

What would lead management to such a sudden action? Days beforehand, I had made an internal report of unethical and apparently illegal behavior by the company: Use of open proxies for web harvesting to avoid blockage by web site operators. HMS apparently decided that working with me to address their use of open proxies was not an option.

Health Market Science is a large corporation with, compared to me, effectively infinite resources. My legal bills have topped $40K already over just two months. If HMS succeeds in tarring me with their false accusations, what's to stop your employer or client from doing the same to you, should your relationship sour?

Friends have set up GeeksUnite.net, an informational web site and Legal Defense Fund. The site includes the search warrant, my letter about open proxy abuse, and court documents.

Please contribute to my Defense Fund to fight this attack on the normal and legal work practices of millions of tech workers. Every little bit counts! If every person who visits the site contributes only ten dollars, that will make a huge difference. Only through community effort can we protect ourselves."

Comments

Re:Spammer gets a moral wake up call

[GooberToo]

You are one stupid idiot. He claims he only recently realized that they were using illegal tactics. Until such realization, he had zero reason to assume they were anything other than a good havister, exactly like Yahoo and Google. Once he found out bad sutff was going on, he tried to get it corrected; for months now. In other words, for your that dumb statement to have any merit, we must all immediately assume that the likes of Yahoo and Google also ignore ROBOTS.TXT. Unless you can prove they ignore it, your position is 100% BS flawed!

As I said, and the moronic mods missed (pea sized brains), it's obvious that the BS statement you are supporting is with 20/20 hind sight. How stupid do you have to be to not understand what I said? Obviously, with hind sight, you can see that they are scum bags. Since you were not in his shoes and he implies that the company is thought to be repuatable, claiming he's stupid for not "know-all" is nothing but BS.

I'm sure I'll be modded to hell for this posting but the stupidity that roams here is just sometimes too much. Go back and re-read my original reply. I never once said that Yahoo and Google did not obey ROBOTS.TXT. And you have zero reason, as posted, support your position, other than a BS statement with hind sight on your side. BS.

Informative my tail. Try -1 stupid.

Re:Spammer gets a moral wake up call

[GooberToo]

Wow! Once again I'm dazzeled b ythe brillance here. YOU only know that because YOU read the article AFTER he TOLD you that THEY used zombies. If HE hadn't told you, you would be in the dark; just as the author claims he was. Which means, until such time you knew what was going on, they would be EXACTLY like Yahoo and Google in eyes of all that remained ignorant!

DIDN'T YOU RTFA!!!!!!!

Re:The corruption is extremely widespread.

[zero_offset]

Part of the way corruption of the courts is accomplished by not giving the courts enough money to operate. ... "The crippling loss of nearly one-third of their staff have left our courts unable to hear criminal cases such as car theft, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud and identity theft."

...

35 Books and 3 movies say the Bush administration is the most corrupt the U.S. has ever had

OMG! TEH PRESIDENT WANTS TO STEAL MY CAR!!!1!

Seriously, what the fuck does your tired and dull anti-Bush rant have to do with the topic?
(n.b. This is a rhetorical question.)

Re:Spammer gets a moral wake up call

[GooberToo]

What a worthless, idiot, mod! That post was nothing near flaimbait! Yet, once again, the mods let the world know how stupid they can be.

Com eon mods, pull your heads from your tail pipes and mod they way you're supposed to mod... Stop moding emetionally! Do your dang job properly already!

THESE ARE THE PEOPLE TO CONTACT

[drDugan]

DAVID S. LIPSON

Carl Witonsky
St. Paul Venture Capital

Stuart Samuels

John Martinson
Edison Venture Fund, Managing Partner

and ... possibly a few more -- dig and call.

I'll leave it to the rest of us geeks out there to figure out why and how. These are the ones who stand to lose from stupid management decisions.